As you may have heard, last night thousands of NYPD officers in riot gear raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan. One man saw it all coming and tried to warn the protesters about what was about to happen, though his warning fell largely on deaf ears. His name: Questlove.

Questlove’s tweet went out to his legion of followers about an hour and 20 minutes before the police descended on the encampment, removing the protesters in a late-night action involving hundreds of officers. That original post was retweeted more than 100 times and carried the hashtag #ows, so it eventually grabbed the attention of the people behind one of the movement’s main Twitter accounts, @occupywallstnyc.

In response, the reports on Twitter came back that all was quiet in Zuccotti Park. There was even some speculation that the large police presence Questlove observed might be a shift change. Others said that maybe they were extras for the filming of a Batman movie, which has been taking place nearby.

But Questlove knew what he had seen. It wasn’t the cast from the Batman film. He questioned those assumptions and quickly typed up three quick posts.

Then, the bullhorns from the police sounded around 1 a.m., setting Twitter ablaze with tweets about the raid.